- May 7, 2006
- 2,360
- 6,367
Yet we are so much better now than then and I am more confident now than any over the top expectations that the media (Sun) had then.I was listening to Max + Charlie baker on talksport earlier, pair of them joking that Max was wearing full chain mail and Charlie had an England flag stapled to his face and had got someone to shoot him in the eye with an arrow to demonstrate how patriotic they were
They interviewed... I dunno, someone, about the team and and they also said they thought Southgate had done an incredible job and it struck me: it's all about "managed expectations". No matter how hyped some fans get, it'll never be as rabid as it was during the late 90s - early 00s, where we expected to win everything, England songs were charting, the whole country would be up for it, then we'd all be very English about it when we didn't win anything.
Southgate has lowered the bar significantly, he's made the team so vanilla that any mention of potentially doing well now comes across as hopeful optimism rather than fan driven confidence.
I’m not on Twitter and I seriously think I am the better for it as I seem to miss a lot of the weird narrative around Southgate and England.